Nauti-Craft Marine Suspension Technology

CARBON TRUST. OFFSHORE WIND ACCELERATOR

The Carbon Trust’s Offshore Wind Accelerator is a ground-breaking research and development initiative focused on strengthening the economics of offshore wind energy.The competition aims to identify and develop new access systems to dramatically improve the availability of wind turbines and the safety of people during the transfer to turbines.

Nauti-Craft TM marine suspension was one of 13 concepts selected from a field of over 450 international entrants in the Carbon Trust’s Offshore Wind Accelerator competition.The Carbon Trust’s Offshore Wind Accelerator is a ground-breaking research and development program partly sponsored by some of the major energy producers in Europe and is focused on strengthening the economics of offshore wind. The competition aims to identify and develop new access systems to dramatically improve the availability of wind turbines and the safety of people during the transit to wind farms and transfer to turbines.

Benj Sykes, Director of Innovation at the Carbon Trust, said: “We’ve trawled the globe looking for revolutionary new ideas that can transfer engineers safely in the huge swells around the UK’s coasts. People have been building boats for thousands of years, but we’ve seen some truly radical departures from what you would think a boat should look like. These designs could significantly improve the economics of offshore wind and keep our engineers safe far out to sea. Our analysis shows offshore wind is a huge green growth opportunity which could create up to 230,000 jobs in the UK by 2050.”

Nauti-Craft was awarded a £100,000 contract to carry out design studies to demonstrate the benefits of Nauti-Craft technology in providing safer crew transfer from Wind Farm Service vessels to wind turbines. This initial contract was extended in 2012 providing a further £150,000 to assist in the design and construction a demonstrator vessel and a further £100,000 in 2013 to assist in further development and to transport the vessel to Southampton to demonstrate to the wind farm industry.

The Offshore Wind Accelerator is two-thirds funded by industry and one-third funded by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). The Carbon Trust's OWA industrial partners are nine international energy companies: • DONG Energy, leading Danish offshore wind farm developer with over 20 years' experience• E.ON, Germany's largest utility • Mainstream Renewable Power, founded by Dr. Eddie O'Connor and Fintan Whelan, the former CEO and CFO of Airtricity • RWE Innogy, Europe-wide renewables business of the German RWE group • Scottish Power Renewables, UK's largest onshore wind farm developer • SSE Renewables (formerly Airtricity), the renewable energy development division of Scottish and Southern Energy • Statkraft, the Norwegian state owned utility • Statoil, Norwegian international energy company • Vattenfall, the owner of the second largest fleet of offshore wind farms in the world